Hilliard Greene tak napisał o zespole:„The four musicians who together comprise SWITCHBACK, a band recognized for its daring, abstract aesthetic, are all composers, arrangers, performers in a variety of musical idioms – are each also fully developed as soloists. Therefore their collective musicianship, versatility, and experience make for a flawless cohesiveness within an entirely improvised format”.

High octane jazz quartet SWITCHBACK

MARS WILLIAMS is one of the true saxophone players-someone who takes pleasure in the sheer act of blowing the horn. This tremendous enthusiasm is an essential part of his sound, and it comes through each note every time he plays. Whatever the situation, Mars plays exciting music. In many ways he has succeeded in redefining what versatility means to the modern saxophone player. - John Zorn, USA

WACLAW ZIMPEL's name goes straight into the list of European jazzmen that gave new life to clarinet and bass clarinet, continuing Dolphy’s example: Surman, Sclavis, Trovesi, and the like. - Francesco Martinelli, Point Of Departure, USA, 2010Polish composer/clarinetist Wacław Zimpel is one of the most promising musicians from the European continent. - Eyal Hareuveni, All About Jazz, USA, 2012

KLAUS KUGEL is one of Central Europe's busiest and most articulate modern jazz drummers ... he treads the boundary between inside and outside playing in a particularly incisive way; always listening and never getting caught up in his own considerable chops. - Dave Wayne, AllAboutJazz, USA, 2013These three discs ... show Kugel as a drummer whose nearly boundless energy and imagination cannot be confined by neat categories. - Ed Hazel, Signal To Noise, USA, 2006

freejazz-stef.blogspot.com * * * * 1/2Dedicated followers of our website know that we love the works of Polish clarinetist Wacław Zimpel, no matter if he plays with his quartet, Hera, Undivided, or Ircha, a clarinet project led by Mikołaj Trzaska (to name just a few). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see him live, until I found out that he was playing with his band Switchback at Dachau’s Kulturschranne, home of the busy local jazz club.

Hilliard Greene (double bass) and Klaus Kugel (drums, percussion) and their performance was like opening up a diverse musical landscape. On the one hand there were Mars Williams’ brutal outbreaks, on the other hand Waclaw Zimpel’s dark clarinet meditations and Klaus Kugel’s zen-like cymbals and chimes. And the glue that holds everything together was Hilliard Greene’s pulse. Especially the second set was mind-blowing. Apart from the brilliant improvised jazz excursions there was a long passage when Williams used the kalimba and Kugel added tiny bells, clips and gongs, while Zimpel set a counterpoint with wooden flutes and a small, portable harmonium. It was a deep dive into jazz’s folkloristic aesthetics, into world music and into good old Chicago free jazz.

Switchback have developed in the last two years, so their CD – a live recording of a 2013 performance-is a bit different from the concert. The first track, “Four Are One”, is a programmatic title since these very different musicians all contribute to an overall sound. The music is a wild mixture of blues and urban free Jazz (Williams), Klezmer and modern classical music (Zimpel), spirituals and traditional grooves (Greene) and somber and liberated beats (Kugel, whose style differed the most compared to the concert). It’s an emotional up and down of wild battles between the saxophones and the clarinets, juxtaposed by lots of meditative and quiet moments. The reeds’ hymn-like moments, the harmony of their interplay, is replaced by different complicated layers, by wild, eruptive, overblown segments that cut like a knife. It’s a feverish ride with lots of twists and turns in which Klaus Kugel’s percussion sets the bright points of rest that set a counterpoint to the intensity of the reeds.

But the real sensation of this quartet is bassist Hilliard Greene, a man whose style is deeply rooted in African music. He is an energetic player who slabs the corpus of his bass, but also caresses the instrument with his bow. He seems to merge with it, and pushes his fellow musicians to unknown realms (especially in the title track where he has a long solo).

In a nutshell: Switchback’s debut is an excellent piece of work, a must have for classic free jazz fans.By Martin Schray

jazzword.comClarinetist Wacław Zimpel could be the poster boy for modern Polish improvised music. Unlike pop music or film idols whose celebrity commonly consists of being able to repeatedly play the same role, the Warsaw-based reedist has created international interest because of his extreme versatility. With playing partners raging from trombonist Steve Swell to kotoist Michiyo Yagi, Zimpel defies simple characterization.

Like trying to compare a dwarf and a giant, Switchback couldn’t provide more of a contrast. Four shards of sinewy Free Jazz, Zimpel symbolically butts heads with Americans, saxophonist/flutist Mars Williams and bassist Hillard Greene as well as German percussionist Klaus Kugel, who has toured with Charles Gayle.

While the clarinet-saxophone front line isn’t common, like two wild felines of different locations but equal ferocity, Zimpel and Williams are compatible enough as they pump out raucous vibrations from the get-go. With Kugel’s drum rolls and rebounds plus Greene’s bass string bumps and pokes seconding, the two spurt irregular crying patterns north and southwards. Although spewing vocalized tones harmonize as if they were sentries standing next to one another in a reviewing line, Williams’ are usually altissimo and unbridled, while Zimpel’s are more moderated and constrained.These pressurized narratives continue throughout the live session recorded in Dresden. Sonically and symbolically they define ugly-beauty singly and together, shifting the exposition from one reedist to the other. With slide-whistle-like respites provided by flute timbres, sul tasto string asides or dinosaur-weighted drum plops momentarily sundering the inspiration, the four so carefully balance the narrative flow that any lesions are sutured together with the speed and efficiency of paramedics.

“Night Shift on Red Planet” and the title track are the extended high points of the disc. The second is a tremolo juggernaut which is one of those showcases that appear to flow endlessly. Racing from altissimo to chalumeau and back again, exposing as many multiphonics as yodelers’ tones, ascribing individual timbres is nearly impossible. Meanwhile Kugel and Greene keep up equivalent churning textures. “Night Shift on Red Planet” begins as a restrained bass feature, and throughout the piece Greene’s stopping moves in and out of the foreground with the sureness of a cartoon villain hiding himself behind a reed-thin tree. However the chief narration involves the four splitting into two duos: Williams and Kugel and Zimpel and Greene. Despite notable bass-string-stropping and cymbal-rim shot luminosity though, the focus is firmly on the reed players. Williams mercurially smears, reeds bites and flutter tongues with monomaniacal-like intensity, but never loses the thematic thread. For his part, Zimpel is relaxed like a professional gambler at a house party game of bridge. While at points he and Williams combine to produce timbres that could be labeled march of the falsettos, most of the time he maintained a comforting reed command. Solos are constructed with the facility of a Benny Goodman and with pointillist seriousness of Jimmy Giuffre.

More proof – if any more was needed – of Zimpel's skill as a composer and player. Now all that’s missing are more discs from him.by Ken Waxman